Rule the world or die trying! Being a Princess is not an easy job. Being a Queen is even harder. Especially when you're only fourteen years old, and the reason you've inherited the throne is that your royal mother has just met an untimely end. Now power is up for grabs.

Reviews

“Each time the protagonist dies, you find yourself coming back with a vengeance, determined to try a new strategy, a different approach to her upbringing. It's borderline addictive. It's also likely to make a monster out of you. By the end of my first successful playthrough, I had summarily butchered everyone who even thought about looking at us funny, forced the princess into a continuous state of docility and lied my way through every social encounter possible. Was it evil? Yes. Was it glorious? Definitely.”
http://indiegames.com/2012/06/review_long_live_the_queen_han.html

“Somehow it never occurred to my princess, whom I’d lovingly crafted into a tense, paranoid warlord, that she shouldn’t empty a box of mysterious mailcandy into her mouth. You would think studying poison and espionage would have saved me from this espionage poison, but instead, a list of other skills, skills I never studied, princess skills, were key to avoiding this fate. I guess that’s the lesson: you can’t build a successful Arya without adding a little Sansa.”
PCGamer

“If you’re the sort who can sink your teeth into a full afternoon of tabletop strategy, you’ll be happy here. Long Live The Queen is a slow-paced, cozy evening kind of game, good for folks who like numbers and critical thinking. And death. Pink frosted, chubby cheeked death.”
The Mary Sue

Steam Greenlight

About This Game

Rule the world or die trying!

Being a Princess is not an easy job. Being a Queen is even harder. Especially when you're only fourteen years old, and the reason you've inherited the throne is that your royal mother has just met an untimely end.

Now power is up for grabs. You may be the official heir, but much of the country's nobility would love to steal the throne for themselves. Aggressive neighbors will take advantage of any weakness to enlarge their borders at your expense. And that's not even mentioning the magical dangers which are lying in wait...

I am a pretty, pretty princess! When trying to become Queen I got stabbed, shot, poisoned, burned to a crisp, and rule 34ed Japan style.10 out of 10, would die again.

Long Live the Queen is a Visual Novel game that, instead of trying to simply win the hearts of others and fall in love, you try to survive the horrors of royal life with your head intact. Of course, it doesn't help when everyone is a bloodthirsty murderer who's only desire is to bring forth the death of a fourteen year-old girl. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with them?

You take the role of Princess Elodie, who needs to be traind to be a proper queen because Disney dictates that no princess is allowed to have a living mother. You end up making all the decisions because your father is a lazy bum who's shirked off all of his responsibilities, but for some reason won't let you have your mother's keepsake. The kingdom is a mess, everyone is evil, and no matter what you do you just can't seem to save this poor little traumatized girl.

The mechanics of the game play on themselves in a bit of a cycle. You can upgrade Elodie's stats; which can increase slowly or rapidly based on her mood; which is based on events that have happened; which are based on your choices as well as her stats; which are upgraded accordingly based on her mood; which is ba-- ah you get the idea. This means that every decision, even the first one, can drastically affect how the story unfolds. No two games are alike, unless you purposefully do everything in the exact same way every time. But that's boring.

Because of the above mentioned do-it-all-the-same concept, you can technically beat the game as many times as you like after you find out how to do it once. But beating the game is not where this game shines. Sure, acquiring the crown and becoming Queen Elodie is a grand event in itself; only if you get there (because you will die, and die a lot). But one of the greatest things about this game the ability to make different choices every time and see where it leads you. Find out what is down each path and discover what you can and can't get away with. And more importantly, unlock all the outfits because they're cute. Proper wardrobe is the pinnacle detail between ratty princesses and prestine queens.

ELODIE WHY WOULD YOU PUSH AN ARROW DEEPER INTO THE WOUND TO REMOVE IT I KNOW YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BATTLEFIELD MEDICINE BUT RAMMING SOMETHING POINTY INTO YOUR ORGANS DOES NOT MAKE THE WOUND BETTER IT MAKES YOU DIE FASTER.

You are the female protagonist Elodie, who is next in the line of succession to the Throne! Sadly your mother dies when you're only just 14 years old, which means it is now your turn to take up the role as Queen of Nova! But it isn't as easy as it sounds, many in the kingdom will attempt to take advantage of your mother's death and assassinate you.

The Visual novel is very much like a dialogue-strategy type, being 14 years old the protagonist is relatively young and has much to learn. You the player will manage Elodie's weekly lessons and the topics you choose to work on will determine the outcome of any given situation your placed in. On weekends you're free to do as you wish around the castle, whatever you decide to do will affect your mood, and that mood will have an effect on how well you do in your lessons, being too cheerful will affect your mental performance and you won't gain many points on that skill.

Skills really do have a great impact on your future in this game, sometimes if you don't have the required skill for a situation this will lead Elodie to do some rather illogical things one prime example is how she got shot by an arrow and placed the arrow deeper within herself! Having no knowledge on what to do when you get shot is fine, maybe you had great trust in your royal guards, but ramming an arrow deeper into yourself?

Animation/Design 9/10

Animation/design isn't very different from most Visual Novels, but at times I felt the background seemed quite dark at times, I believe it adds to the lonely feeling in the game, you're not surrounded by a lot friends or family, but when you are, it's short-lived.

Audio/Soundtrack 9/10

I believe the soundtrack is simply beautiful, the entire soundtrack consists of 27 piano pieces. They really fit the right track into the right situation and emotion, there's even this particular track called 'Talking' which is played when you're conversing with someone, there are four versions of that track, Happy, Sad, Fragile/Calm, Busy and Worried.

Review Conclusion

I really enjoyed LongLong Live The Queen it's unique in its own way and I really love the dialogue-strategy part of it. There's a lot of trial and error involved the game, anything that may seem perfectly harmless maybe opposite in this game, I was skilled strategist in every way, but I was killed by chocolate. I recommend this game to anyone interested in dialogue-strategy or even those interested in royalty, you have an insight of the life of royalty, the risks involved, royal demeanor, internal and foreign affairs, the struggle.

Long Live the Queen is fun in a way. I'm not giving it a negative review because it isn't... and I'm sure it appeals to the people who like putting cute girls in different uniforms, but Long Live The Queen's gameplay is pure, sheer trial-and-error. You spend your days in the castle, developing skills and learning how to be a good queen. Of course, Elodie can't be good at everything, so you have to pick which skills to develop and which to leave alone. This is all nice in itself, if it weren't for the fact that the game keeps killing Elodie in more and more contrived ways, and every time this happens, it's because the player didn't develop some kind of obscure skill enough. Which means you have to - and this is no exaggeration - play a few weeks until you die, then load your save again and gear all your skill points toward preventing that death. You need to do this every time. What's the point of playing a game if I have to die over and over again and can only prevent it by save-scumming and using foreknowledge?

Decided to train Elodie to work with falcons rather than dogs? Too bad, because for some reason a high Dogs skill is all that can prevent you from being poisoned. It gets worse. You get challenged to a duel, and since you've got a good lot of skill points in swords, you confidently accept - only to see Elodie getting run through because whoops, the game decides to test against Athletics instead! I went to assist my troops to fight a naval battle, but did you think the game would check my (almost-maxed) Naval Strategy skill? Nope. Instead, it tests against Climbing and Meditation. Naval Strategy isn't even checked once. It does check against swimming, but haha, did you think being decent at it was enough? Nope, sleepy time with the fishes for you! Get challenged to a duel? You die because your Composure wasn't high enough and you, for some reason, decide to charge the inhumanly powerful mage that just obliterated your father.

Yeah, Hanako Games, I know replayability is a good thing, but try doing it in less cheap and lazy ways next time. A game like Vlad the Impaler, which gives you choices in crisis scenarios and then tests against your stats, does it right. Your game, which railroads crisis situations and then decided to test against a single skill, does not.

Cons:-You die. A lot. Or at least I do.-Plays a bit like a well-developed flash game.+To be fair, it is an exceptionally well developed flash game.

Overall:Yes, it's a glorified flash game. Yes, the gameplay is simplistic. But the storyline is actually very intriguing once you get into it. There are achievements for creative ways to die. It's just... fun. It's not particularly hard, nor is it just easy. But I really enjoyed this game, which is more than I can say of some others. I think it's definitely worth the buy.

Bottom Line: There's really only one standard I use to buy games: Is it fun? The answer to this is definitely "yes" for Long Live The Queen.